CEDAR GROVE, W.Va. — Officials with the West Virginia Department of Highways worked all weekend to clear debris off U.S. Route 60 in eastern Kanawha County in hopes of getting the road back open Monday morning. The work didn’t amount to much.
“We had a lane open and then about 30 minutes later we shut it back down because of the instability,” said Department of Transportation Spokesman Brent Walker.
The slide area is about 150 feet long and hangs high above the roadway. A large amount of debris including rocks, mud, and trees poured onto the roadway Saturday night. However, there’s plenty more where that came from and Walker added they can’t determine the root of the cause.
“It continues to be really hyper saturated,” said Walker. “It’s forced us to close it down and really figure out how we can get that thing fixed.”
Walker said the project has now grown beyond the capabilities of their equipment and personnel so they’ll hire a contractor to do the work on an emergency basis. They’ve also been in consultation with the Department of Environmental Protection fearing the water was coming from an old mine site. DEP inspectors determined it wasn’t mine water. Now engineers from Appalachian Power are being consulted since the power company has a road above the slide area. Walker said they aren’t assigning blame to the road, but wanted the power company in on the discussion of repairs.
“Route 60 is a major U.S. Route for us and certainly we can’t keep it closed very long,” Walker said. “But we’ve got to figure out how we can clean that up, how we can fix it, and also how to stabilize that hillside. That’s the most important part.”
For the time being, traffic is being detoured to State Route 61 on the opposite side of the Kanawha River at the Lopez Bridge in Chelyan and the bridge at Montgomery.